Current Tres Amigas News

Western Interconnect LLC ("WI") launched on October 3, 2016, an Open Season process to allocate up to 603 MW of transmission rights on its proposed transmission line in New Mexico. Through this Open Season, WI will solicit Transmission Service Requests ("TSR") from parties willing to acquire firm transmission service rights at the same rates, terms and conditions as offered to anchor customers on the line. The TSR submission window will conclude on November 11, 2016.

October marked seven years since the Tres Amigas company first announced its plan to create an electrical superstation connecting three U.S. power grids, with Clovis at the center. That superstation still has a ways to go, but is "alive and well," according to Tres Amigas Chief Financial Officer Russell Stidolph.
Although the company three years ago announced a 2016 completion date, Stidolph now expects the finished project to emerge in another three to five years.

The United States is home to vast quantities of clean energy resources - wind, solar, geothermal, and hydropower. Yet it lacks a modern interstate transmission grid to deliver carbon-free electricity to customers in highly populated areas of the country. President Obama has called for the United States to double the production of renewable energy in three years and to secure 25 percent of its electricity from renewable resources by 2025.

This study addresses the greatest concern facing the large-scale integration of wind, water, and solar (WWS) into a power grid: the high cost of avoiding load loss caused by WWS variability and uncertainty. It uses a new grid integration model and finds low-cost, no-load-loss, nonunique solutions to this problem on electrification of all US energy sectors (electricity, transportation, heating/cooling, and industry) while accounting for wind and solar time series data from a 3D global weather model that simulates extreme events and competition among wind turbines for available kinetic energy. Solutions are obtained by prioritizing storage for heat (in soil and water); cold (in ice and water); and electricity (in phase-change materials, pumped hydro, hydropower, and hydrogen), and using demand response.

Tres Amigas LLC is planning to invest $500 million on a first-of-its-kind project in Clovis that will connect the country's three disparate power grids. The company, based in Santa Fe now, will be moving to Albuquerque to run the Tres Amigas superstation once the facility is up and running.

Tres Amigas President Phil Harris introduced today the concept of a buried High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) electric transmission network for New Mexico. Citing references to the success of the Erie Canal in New York in 1815, Mr. Harris discussed the parallels to New Mexico today, including the scoffers, challenges and decisions a single State can make. Julia Frayer of London Economics discussed the economic value to the State that could occur should such a system be constructed.

The information presented, although believed to be reliable, is not guaranteed and is subject to change. It is not to be used, in whole or in part, for any other purpose without the express written permission of Tres Amigas, LLC.